Transport tunnels are employed in communications, networks, and networking equipment (e.g., routers, switches, hubs, etc.) to route data between endpoints. In some instances, transport tunnels may be used to forward packets through a network that does not support the particular packet protocol in use. For example, a transport tunnel may be used to forward a non-UP packet across an IP network, multicast packets across a unicast network, etc.
Services may be bound to a transport tunnel, but use a cross-connect or binding that is individually connected between a service and a transport tunnel. In order to modify the service or tunnel that is transporting packets for the service, each individual service and cross connect must be individually modified. This limits the ability of networks to efficiently implement and operate services across core networks, leading to significant time and expense in both managing the transport tunnels as well as the services that connect to them. Further, it inhibits the implementation for networks where a service vendor may be providing numerous services across a multitude of core networks or transport tunnels.
Thus, a solution is needed that enables capabilities for providing service-based data communication using transport tunnels that does not require that each individual service be reconfigured every time a transport tunnel is added, changed, or removed and that allows services to be added, changed, or removed without requiring that those provisioning such services have detailed information about the transport tunnels and how the tunnels are configured.